Stephen Fry

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Image:Stephen Fry moab is my washpot.jpg

Stephen John Fry (born 24 August, 1957) is an English comedian, author, actor and filmmaker. He is an erstwhile comedy collaborator of Hugh Laurie. He was described as being "a man with a brain the size of Kent" in an interview with Michael Parkinson.

In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, he was voted amongst the top 50 comedy acts ever by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.

In recent years, Fry has more or less assumed the role of a national treasure in the UK. He is sometimes perceived as a tweedy, old-fashioned figure despite his troubled teenage years and frequently unconventional views.

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Childhood and education

Fry was born in Hampstead, London, the son of Alan Fry, an English scientist, and Marianne Neumann, an Austrian homemaker. He was educated at Stout's Hill, Uppingham School, during which time Fry absconded with a stolen credit card and, when apprehended, spent three months in Pucklechurch Prison for fraud. He then returned to his education at NORCAT (Norfolk College of Arts and Technology) where he took his A-Levels, before going on to Queens' College, Cambridge, where he gained a 2:1 in English. During his time at Cambridge he met his longstanding friend and collaborator Hugh Laurie, joined the Cambridge Footlights, and appeared on University Challenge.

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Career highlights

Highlights of Fry's career include:

Fry has often expressed admiration for three other authors; Anthony Buckeridge, his friend Douglas Adams, and P.G. Wodehouse. Their influence is noticeable in his writing style and it therefore seems appropriate that he has appeared as Jeeves, alongside Hugh Laurie's Bertie Wooster, in the Granada television adaptations of Wodehouse's writings, as The Guide in the film adaptation of Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and has read Buckeridge's Jennings stories on BBC radio.

Fry is also currently hosting the hit question and answer programme "QI" with contestants such as Alan Davies, Bill Bailey, Phill Jupitus and Jo Brand.

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Personal life

Fry has spoken about his struggle to keep his homosexuality secret during his teenage years at public school, and famously practised a celibate lifestyle for 16 years. He memorably said about his homosexuality "I suppose it all began when I came out of the womb. I looked back up at my mother and thought to myself, 'That's the last time I'm going up one of those.'" (In his autobiography Moab is My Washpot he admits that he 'borrowed' the line from a friend at university.) Fry currently lives in London with his long-time partner, Daniel Cohen. Fry met Cohen after piecing his life together following a breakdown in 1995 due to bad reviews for his performance in the play Cell Mates.

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List of works

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Performances

Image:Jeeves.jpg

Stephen Fry also narrates the UK audio versions of the Harry Potter books. He also made a guest appearance in a special webcast version of Doctor Who in a story called Death Comes to Time, in which he plays a Time Lord, the Minister of Chance. He was originally supposed to be writing Episode 11 of the 2006 series of Doctor Who, but this appears to have been pushed back to the 2007 season (possibly due to budget constraints).

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Trivia

  • The Stars' Tennis Balls' major characters all have names that are anagrams or other simple mutations of their counterparts in The Count of Monte Cristo (Fry claimed that he had almost completed writing the book when he realised that his plot was essentially the same as Dumas'. He thus changed the characters' names, so that his novel would appear to be a conscious homage to Dumas.):
Monte Cristo Stars' Tennis Balls Notes
Edmond Dantes Ned Maddstone anagram
Mercedes Portia pun: Mercedes-Benz → Porsche
de Villefort Oliver Delft anagram
the Abbe (Faria) the Babe (Fraser) partial anagram
Fernand Mondego Gordon Fendeman anagram
Noirtier Blackrow translated literally (calque)
Capt. Leclere Paddy Leclare homonym
Caderousse Rufus Cade translation: rousse = red = Rufus
Baron Danglars Barson-Garland anagram
Monte Cristo Simon Cotter anagram
  • As well as having competed on University Challenge whilst at Cambridge, he also appeared in The Young Ones as "Lord Snot", one of the "Footlights College" team against whom The Young Ones are competing in a fictitious edition of University Challenge. He later appeared in a Comic Relief edition of University Challenge as part of the "Gownies" team of University-graduate comedians, against the (victorious) team of "Townies"; and in another Comic Relief special two years later as part of the South team who beat the North.
  • He appeared several times as a panelist on Have I Got News For You during the 1990s, but now refuses to appear on the show as a protest against the sacking of Angus Deayton in 2002.
  • In 2003, he was listed in The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy.
  • Very early in his West End debut (Simon Gray's play Cell Mates), Fry suffered an attack of stage fright so serious that he ran away, leaving only an apology, and turning up some days later in Belgium.
  • In 2005, Fry was made an honorary fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge, from which he graduated. He has also served a term as Lord Rector of the University of Dundee, which named their main Students' Association bar after one of his novels ('The Liar Bar').
  • Fry was the last ever person awarded the title of Pipe Smoker of the Year before the award's discontinuation for legal reasons.
  • A humorous book has been published that teaches people how to speak like Stephen Fry. It is called Tish and Pish - how to be of a speakingness like Stephen Fry (ISBN 1840244666). However, this book is not endorsed by Stephen himself; it does not accurately reflect his mannerisms, and it contains various grammatical errors.
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External links

fi:Stephen Fry fr:Stephen Fry he:סטיבן פריי ja:スティーヴン・フライ nl:Stephen Fry sv:Stephen Fry

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